August 25, 2004 News & Views » Cover

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Deadly Dependence 

The South's economic reliance on military bases has left a toxic legacy throughout the region

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An unseen enemy
These days, Darlene and Elijah Robinson cope the best they can with their reduced health, the loss of their grandson, and their displacement from home. Since they moved out of the South Carolina patio house, some of their symptoms have subsided. But both still have some breathing problems, and the burning sensation remains. Sometimes, when Elijah tries to sleep, "it feels like his lungs are going to drown him," his wife says.

"Right now, we have a makeshift life," she says. They have moved to an apartment, but their favorite keepsakes remain in their old home, unmovable for fear of additional contamination. "Everything that has to do with our lives is in that house: all our photographs, all our heirlooms," she says. "We were attacked by an unseen enemy, and everything we had was taken from us."

Jerry Ensminger, the retired Marine who lost his daughter to leukemia, has turned his grief into political action. Not only has he been trying to get to the bottom of the Camp Lejeune drinking water scandal, but he's also been fighting the Pentagon's efforts to win exemptions from environmental laws. Speaking before a congressional panel last year, he told the story of Janey's death, then implored lawmakers not to give the Department of Defense a "license to kill" its soldiers and their families.

Ensminger voted for President Bush in 2000, and he's still a registered Republican. But he's far more critical of his government than he was four years ago, and far less loyal to the military he served for almost a quarter-century.

"There is something fundamentally wrong in our government," he says, "when the agency that was created to protect our country and our way of life is requesting immunities that would allow them to kill the very people they were created to protect -- and to get away with it."

Barry Yeoman is a freelance writer in Durham, N.C. He can be reached at barry@barryyeoman.com. His website is www.barryyeoman.com.

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